On April 21, more than 80 investment professionals and emerging growth company executives participated in SJA/ShareVault’s webinar, “New FinTECH Funding Alternatives for Life Science Companies.” Topics of discussion included answers to the following questions:

The goal of this paper is to provide institutional investors, managers, and originators with a greater understanding of best practices for leveraging FinTECH to overcome inherent challenges with direct investing: liquidity, adverse selection, diversification, volatility, performance, scalability, access to best managers, and valuation.

Background

Institutional adoption of FinTECH platforms in the P2P sector has been robust. Prosper’s (leading P2P originator) lending origination grew by 347% in 2014 (YOY) issuing $1 billion worth of loans in just 6 months surpassing the $2 billion mark for the first time in the fall of 2014. Highlighting this accomplishment, it took Prosper 8 years to reach its first $1 billion in originations. Ron Suber, President – Prosper, terms this explosive growth “Escape Velocity” or escaping the gravitational pull of traditional lending practices and constraints (~banking industry).

And what accounted for Prosper’s escape velocity? Institutional capital! Hedge funds have been the primary catalyst for Prosper crossing the $5 billion mark in loan originations (October 2015). On the equity side, institutional capital is gaining access to early-stage technology and scaling capital primarily via investor syndicates (~online venture funds) participating both as “lead” syndicators (~Arena Ventures) and members of syndicates managed by esteemed investors.

Scott Jordan will be participating in the roundtable covering the JOBS Act on Monday, Nov. 9th from 8:30 – 11:30 a.m. in Washington, DC (Morrison & Foerster office). The event, hosted by Milken Institute Center for Financial Markets, will be an off-the-record discussion of the impact the JOBS Act has had on capital formation and investor access and protection, and will feature government and industry representatives, academics and investor advocates. They anticipate discussing:

Scott Jordan will be speaking at the 4th Oncology Partnering & Deal-making Conference November 16-17, 2015 in San Francisco, CA at Hotel Kabuki. He will be participating in the panel discussion, “Access to Capital Markets.”

Healthcare venture capital fundraising and investment activity is at historical levels. Bolstered by robust IPO, business development and Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) activity, unprecedented amounts of capital are being raised/deployed into healthcare companies and distributed to General Partners (GPs) generating consistent, positive returns for investors.

While researching and analyzing the key players and drivers underpinning the digital investment landscape, the DealIndex team uncovered a whole ecosystem of players that have transitioned into the online investment space. We realized that these players and how they interrelate with one another have not been covered before in a comprehensive manner. As such, we have attempted to capture the interlinkages between the swarm of players in the alternative finance space with this report.